SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

This Blog Post poses the question of destiny.

Is it a worthy concept in fantasy literature?

I'd love to hear your thoughts, in the comments section below the post!
Thanks, FF McCulligan

Although I did read and enjoy the Belgariad (this was when it first came out), I generally avoid "destiny/prophecy" type stories. To clarify, this does not include situations where a person is "destined" to be a great soldier/scientist/artist because everyone can see his or her innate talent even as a child.

Some might point to the prophecy of Paul in Dune, but his "destiny" was the result of thousands of years of genetic and political manipulation. His "destiny" was man made, and even then it went wrong in terms of the original intentions of the plotters.

I much prefer stories where characters have agency - they are able to choose their own fates, instead of being herded around by "destiny" or having to follow some sort of prophecy.

Prophecies do leave open the possibility of following them or not, and of ambiguity. They've been done to death, but I think there are still some interesting twists to take with them. Like in Harry Potter, the prophecy could have applied to either Harry or Neville; it was Voldemort who decided it applied to Harry.

It's also fun to see Destiny trying to herd the characters around, while the characters have ideas of their own.

But I definitely would not rely on Destiny and Prophecy as engines to drive the plot and the characters' choices and actions. To me, the big interest in a story lies in the characters and the choices, and having them do things just because it's their destiny or it's been prophesied takes away all the fun.

I've gotten to the point where I don't even read the prophecy. I just skip that section and move on with the novel.

I think it depends on how it's done.

Take Star Wars, for example.

Darth Vader was - when still Anakin Skywalker - destined to do something big. He was "destined" to equal the Force. The Jedi assumed that this meant he was to become some great hero.

Instead, Anakin becomes Darth Vader. He becomes evil incarnate and proceeds to slaughter those who trusted him. Not a hero.

But what about the Prophecy? Equalizing the Force? Well, technically he did that.

Before Anakin, the Force had a shitton of Jedi but only two Darth Lords.

After Anakin, the Force had only two Jedi and two Darth Lords.

Prophecy fulfilled.

I believe that every book faces the questions of fate and destiny, whether or not they realize it, or choose to address it.

Whenever a person comes to a fork in the proverbial road and they make a choice, there's the question of what caused them to make that choice. Was it some ethereal force that saw down to the end of each road and nudged the hero in one direction or another? Or rather is the hero a free agent in the cosmos with nothing to guide him?

Regardless of which answer you choose, you're still addressing the questions of fate and destiny.

Why does the fate/destiny always seem to come in the form of bad poetry with multiple meanings? (rhetorical)

The multiple meanings, in any case, are traditional, as with the fabled Oracle of Delphi. I like the way Mary Renault put it in The Mask of Apollo: “[The words of] the double-tongued [i.e. Apollo Loxias] … move to their meaning like a serpent in a reed-bed, coil and countercoil; how can a man tell all his mind to children, or a god to men?”

Ha! DavidO your questioning of the bad poetry with multiple meanings is very apt.

There is even a prophecy in A Song of Ice and FIre which pertains to Daenerys Targaryen. I am going to butcher it, because I don't have the book with me, but isn't it something like, "You will be betrayed three times, once for love, once for gold, and once for ... revenge?" I don't know.

It is fun to try and puzzle out the cryptic prophecies as the story progresses.

I also like the Anakin reference. He sure did bring balance to the force.

But doesn't it just make it slightly boring to know what's going to happen next? As a reader, we wonder what it all means. I think that the true meaning of a prophecy being revealed at the climax of a book is still a slightly cool way to go about it. It is almost like the thrill of reading a mystery and trying to figure out who the real killer is before the end. The masterful writer will leave enough clues to guide the reader to the correct assumption if the reader pays enough attention.

As with all things it depends.

My favorite use of it was in Frank Herbert's Dune series where the main "prophecy" was purposefully generated for political reasons, planted in more backward societies. And then it comes true...kinda. And ultimately the one who personifies it rejects it.

It's not as effective when it comes about too cleanly.

You had better pull a cute one out of the hat, if you want to hold my interest. How about, yes! The young hero discovers his destiny/fate, and it is to be ... a Linux programmer! Oh noes, he rebels against his fate and sets out with sword and shield...

I tend not to like destiny stuff. It's too easy to cause a story to drop into a groove and make the outcome predictable, but like others have said, it can be subverted to interesting effect.

I liked how Terry Goodkind played with destiny/fate/predetermination vs free will through the Sword of Truth series. It ranges from a small part to the dominant theme, depending on the book, with various fun permutations on the perceptions of the main characters and general populace.

But I tend not to like the straight predestination approach.

It depends on how you perceive destiny. Does each of us have a destiny that we can or cannot fulfill? One can have "a destiny" and still not choose to follow it for reasons both good and bad and then have to deal with the consequences.
This is a major theme that will continue to entrance IMHO.

What is the argument for prophecy working or destiny being real?

Part of the history of fantasy is that at times humanity has believed in destiny. And because we were ignorant of how the world worked and fearful, we always wanted to know how things would turn out, seers and prophets were real people.

Today they appear in books as shorthand for a plot device the writer couldn't fully work out. Except in mine where how destiny works is actually explained.

:)

oh Daniel, you intrigue the mind and titillate the senses. Pray, tell how destiny works in your book. Unless you are far too mysterious and cryptic for such transparency.

Play your cards right with a damn good teaser, you might just sell a book to me my friend.

In answer however, to your previous question, "What is the argument for prophecy working or destiny being real?"

My answer: hindsight.

When you look back on your own, mundane, unique, strange, unbelievable life, don't you wonder why things turned out the way they have? Isn't there a crossroads back there in your timeline where you stood and pondered without the faintest clue what the future held? And yet you chose one of the paths.

The strangest thing in the world is that... we tend not to regret. Yes there is pain and turmoil in my past. Yes there are mistakes. Yet I regret nothing. My previous mistakes primed my pump for the beautiful messed up life I lead today.

Don't you think that some wise old geezer once looked back and thought, "Here I am on my death bed. And still, there's no other way it could have gone. I can't regret lost lovers, because I have my wife. There's nothing I could have done to stop her from dying, so I cherish the memories, the bittersweet pain of missing her. There's nothing I could have done to stop the wars, change the failures, undo the mistakes, but here and now, why would I change it. For now I'm at the doorstep of the infinite."

How about it?

I want a physics-based prophecy where the protagonist meets his density.

Interesting, Christopher. Does it beg the question of time travel? That paradox in which having already experienced the "future" provides insight about it, but not the ability to alter it?

I feel that authors should never be heavy handed about destiny. They should leave it up to reader interpretation. That way readers who want to believe in destiny can do that, and those that don't like destiny can leave it out of the equation.

F.F. wrote: "Interesting, Christopher. Does it beg the question of time travel? That paradox in which having already experienced the "future" provides insight about it, but not the ability to alter it?"

Not sure, either way, it's a weighty question.

Christopher wrote: "Not sure, either way, it's a weighty question. "

*dies laughing*

F.F. wrote: Yes there are mistakes. Yet I regret nothing.

That's a logical contradiction. Anything you don't regret, by definition, wasn't a mistake.

I am human. I contain multitudes.

F.F. wrote: "oh Daniel, you intrigue the mind and titillate the senses. Pray, tell how destiny works in your book. Unless you are far too mysterious and cryptic for such transparency.

Play your cards right wit..."

haha..probably what I was trying to do.

but to answer you I will use the words of the first of my three beta readers who has written her thoughts on Ruzniel.

'Ruzniel is brilliantly woven together, and although in the end I've decided it's not my "cup of tea," I have to recognize that it reflects great talent.'
..............
My work is almost done.
..............
The problem is destiny has departed from real life and just become a plot device. To get back to the feeling in literature past readers might have had when reading what has now become de rigeur for some writers, we should be looking at what hits our buttons in the real world.

It's the same discussion I had about why are so many fantasy novels based in monarchies. We have become lazy, writing for a market that has expectations. I like to challenge. In fact I must if I didn't I would be bored with my own work and how awful would that be :)

F.F. wrote: "In answer however, to your previous question, "What is the argument for prophecy working or destiny being real?"

My answer: hindsight.

When you look back on your own, mundane, unique, strange, un..."

I regret all the time. I regret that I didn't have the knowledge that I have now so that I could have chosen better in the past.

I believe that when I die the lights go out, so at the moment of my death I will regret that my life wasn't better and longer.

Regret is what drives me to not repeat my past mistakes and to make the very best of today and every today to come so that my future regrets will be as small as they can be.

Without regret I would be tempted to simply float on the stream of life, drifting from moment to moment uncaring of the present or the future, instead of squeezing every drop of living out of each passing moment.

I have mixed feelings about destiny/prophecy and I think it depends on nuance.

1. If it's destiny/prophecy that the two characters will fall in love, count me out. That's way too heavy handed and really calls into question free will. (Not to mention the laughable idea that there is only one person in the entire universe for you.)

2. If the destiny rests entirely on the shoulders of one person (who oddly enough is always a young man of simple origins) yet the actions are really being implemented by many actors, well that's a huge fail. (Unless the work acknowledges that scholars mystics made the mistake of thinking it would all be one person, not several people.)

3. If the prophecy is written way, way too far in advance. Thousands of years before anyone is born claiming that "so and so will be born here" (yep, not prone to manipulation at all...) or is really, really cryptic so practically anything can fulfill it.

Now in some series I've come across the prophecies are being written/interpreted by mystics who are alive at the same time of the heroes or a generation before. Those are way more interesting because it leaves it open to what is actually mystical foreseeing or maybe knowledge from spies, who is the mystic trying to manipulate, and is the mystic an ally, a nemesis, or neutral observer.

I'm not a huge fan of "fate". People are more interesting than "the cosmic tapestry." I mean, it can be well done, but it's just not my thing, in general. I like dirty, gritty, dark stories, and a lot of times the prophecy acts as a mental buffer that prevents it from getting too intense.

My favorite use of fate/destiny, is when it's being manipulated and becomes, to my mind, a similar kind of destabilizing influence, like an unreliable narrator. Destiny is interesting from a psychological standpoint, but not from a story-driven one.

(Spoilers for a few series below. Mistborn trilogy, and Memory, Sorrow and Thorn)
(view spoiler)[
For instance, Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy- you spend the whole series believing that one character fulfills the prophecy, only to discover with her brutal torture and death that it was someone else the entire time. It's horrific, because of the gruesomeness of the heroine's death, and the expansive ways it changes the context of the entire story.

And Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy- all of these characters work toward that prophecy, believing it's the only thing to prevent the end of the world, but at the end, you discover that the entire prophecy was a fabrication, and that they have been subtly playing into the end of the world with each hard-won victory. I mean, those books are spectacular anyways, but the depth of the betrayal is devastatingly done.

(hide spoiler)]

I think most will agree that prophecy can be done well particularly when used to alert us to the importance of what initially appears to be mundane acts or average people. I think a lot of the negative response comes from the prophecy overshadowing the characters. In those stories prophecy becomes plot instead of a method of foreshadowing great things to come. One last thing for me prophecy had better be vague. If the prophecy is a synopsis of the plot the book will not get finished.

Katie wrote: "My favorite use of fate/destiny, is when it's being manipulated and becomes, to my mind, a similar kind of destabilizing influence, like an unreliable narrator. Destiny is interesting from a psycho..."

I agree on Mistborn's take on prophecy. It was an amazing spin on a common trope.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with it, and it works really well sometimes, but I think it's seriously overused.

Dorothy L. Sayers wrote a very good essay on the use of prophecy in fiction, called "Oedipus Simplex". Unfortunately it's only available in two collections which I suspect are out of print: The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement Volume 3: On Dante and Other Writers and The Whimsical Christian: 18 Essays. I'd go with the former because I know that at least some of the essays in the latter were abridged.

It works best if you're using the hero's journey as your skeleton. The two really go hand-in-hand.

I don't mind it provided that it doesn't turn into a form of "plot armour" whereby the destined one can do anything, no matter how stupid, illogical, or downright bizarre, and still stumble onto victory.

Prophecy and destiny are used all too often to substitute for motivation, which is why the prophecy I like best is in The Horse and His Boy, where you don't learn about it until after it's been fulfilled.

But a prophecy that doesn't play with your mind and work out differently than intended is -- No Fun At All. (That's a technical term.)

There's also forecasting, which, even if magical, can be off. But that's different.

F.F. wrote: "In answer however, to your previous question, "What is the argument for prophecy working or destiny being real?"

My answer: hindsight..."

My answer: predeterminism.

But in predeterminism everyone is fated to some specific end. There would be no special chosen one, because we've all been chosen to follow one and only one path. Even those making a prophecy were fated to have made the prophecy.

And actaully there are some really interesting scientific studies that make you really wonder if things aren't predetermined.

Such as this one: http://www.newscientist.com/article/d...

Test subjects were asked make a choice, their brain activity was monitored. The nerve impulse to initiate a movement (the physical act of making the choice) happened up to 5 seconds BEFORE the test subject consciously made the choice!

Spooky.

F.F. thanks for that link. As you may know there are those (Sam Harris for one)who tout that humans have no free will. This adds suggestions that the "decision has not yet been made."

I think many Fantasy/Science Fiction books have Destiny/Fate topics within them, the struggle to follow, fight or remake them; prophecy as well, depending upon which side of those destined or fated characters a few secondary characters/themes fall.

Most books deal with going against the grain—even if in the end they come true because the prophecy was misinterpreted, as is often the case. :)

It is lazy writing, frankly. There are better ways to get the plot into motion.

This discussion makes me think of this book: Foretold: 14 Tales of Prophecy and Prediction, a collection of short stories centered around the theme of prophecy. There's plenty of subversion of prophecies and self-fulfilling prophecies in this collection.